“Yet only four of us have woken?” Dag shook his head, his expression both angry and aghast. “This sounds too far advanced for such a slow response. What has happened to our brothers? We should be awake and ready to strike at our enemies.”
“Trust us, we’re way ahead of you.” Wynn’s smile looked grim. “Ella, Fil, and I are actively searching, both for the remaining Guardians and any surviving Wardens we can find, but it hasn’t been easy. When Knox said the Guild headquarters were destroyed, he meant it. It burned to ash, which is quite an accomplishment when you’re talking about a several-hundred-year-old stone building. The fire destroyed the Guild’s library and archives, as well as killed everyone inside. We’re working blind while we try to locate the rest of you guys. We don’t have the usual records to show us where you’ve been resting.”
Dag scoffed. “A simple fire destroyed the Guild?”
“Simple, my ass. It was magical, without a doubt,” Wynn said. “The Order was definitely behind it, and they were thorough.”
“Thorough enough to have destroyed my Warden as well?” Dag asked. “If that were true, how is it that I have woken? With no Warden to issue the summons—”
“Oh, you’ve got a Warden, big guy. Don’t worry about that.” Wynn smirked. “As a matter of fact, you’re standing right next to her.”
“Her?”
“Me?” Kylie wasn’t sure who sounded more shocked—her or the lump of lava rock hovering beside her chair. “Half an hour ago, I didn’t even know what a Warden was, and now I’m supposed to play one on TV? Ayn klaynigkeit.”
Yeah, sure.
“Trust me, Ky. All three of us have stood right where you are, and it was just as big a shock to us,” Wynn assured her.
Kylie choked out a laugh. “You just said you’ve got like a hundred generations of these Warden thingies in your family, Wynneleh, so tell me how that’s the same as my not knowing magic existed before tonight.”
“If you claim not to know magic, you are mistaken.” Knox eyed her through the camera lens, his chiseled features serious. “A Warden must be gifted with power in order to be admitted to the Guild, and only those with the greatest abilities can summon a Guardian from his sleeping.”
“Okay, (a) we just discussed that the Guild is now so much dust in the wind, and (b) I did no summoning of any kind. Bupkes. Whatever woke up Rip Van Winkle over here, I wasn’t any part of it.”
Wynn wriggled a little in her chair. “See, that’s the thing, Ky. Knox is right. You must have some abilities you’re not aware of, because every one of the Guardians who have woken so far have done it when a Warden near them was in danger, even if the Warden didn’t know what she was at the time. Ella and Fil didn’t know anything about all this before they got dragged into it, either. First time they ever heard the word ‘Guardian’ was when their Guardians started talking to them.” She paused, her mouth actually curving into a smile. “In fact, now that I think of it, this conversation we’re having right now is pretty much becoming a sort of tradition for our little underground army. Huh.”
Kylie grunted. “Yeah, it’s charming. Just like Shabbat dinner.”
Knox leaned close to Wynn and spoke quietly, but his deep voice carried farther than he probably thought. “I do not understand many of the words this friend of yours speaks. Are you certain she makes sense?”
“I have wondered this myself,” Dag threw in.
Wynn laughed and patted her Guardian’s chest. “She’s fine, big guy. When Kylie gets worked up, she starts to fling the Yiddish. Totally normal. Well, for her anyway.”
“Yiddish? But this word means Jewish, and this language is not Hebrew, which I would recognize. It sounds … it sounds as if Germans and Russians were put in a pot and shaken until they couldn’t remember their own tongues.”
Kylie rolled her eyes. “Yiddish is the common cultural language of the Ashkenazi Jewish people of central and eastern Europe. It is also frequently spoken by Jews of that descent here in America as well as in countries around the world. In addition, it’s used by plenty of non-Jews with fluent Jewish family members.”
Dag eyed her curiously. “Then you are Jewish?”
“No. My father’s a Jew, but my mother is just a capitalist.”
Wynn laughed, but the Guardians looked even more confused.
Kylie had told this story a thousand times, so she sighed as she again answered the unspoken questions. “Jewishness varies depending on who you ask. Traditionally, and according to the Orthodox community, I can’t be Jewish because my mother isn’t. Judaism technically passes matrilineally. Also, since I don’t actively practice, most Reform Jews don’t consider me Jewish, either. They’re liberal enough to say anyone with Jewish ancestry who practices Judaism is a Jew. Again, not me. But I spent a lot of time with my grandmother when I was growing up, and she was Jewish—my father’s mother. She was also fluent in Yiddish, so I learned the language from her.”